I could understand if they were deprecating it in favor of Vulkan. That would be in-line with Apple's history of aggressively pushing forward new standards. But by no means do they have the clout to coerce developers into their own bespoke graphics API that doesn't work anywhere else. All they'll accomplish is further killing off the already-small presence they have in the gaming space.

Microsoft could not care less about OpenGL on Windows. However, it works just fine.

You know why? As soon as you install your video card drivers, your OpenGL implementation is no longer from Microsoft. It comes from AMD, NVidia or Intel, with all needed optimizations for their hardware.

Apple insisted in not allowing this and doing the OpenGL implementation themselves (which was always crappy and outdated).

Had they allowed the GPU vendors the ability to provide their own implementation, this would have been a non issue.

Legacy software, blah, blah, blah. No legacy software runs forever, and least of all on Apple platforms. Who cares.

Requiring developers to use an API locked to a particular platform feels pretty hostile to me. Doesn't matter if that API isn't perfect, or even far from it.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/37575/

If game developers -- and game engine developers -- targeting OpenGL now are in the process of moving to target Vulkan, and if MoltenVK ends up offering better performance on macOS than Apple's legendarily anemic OpenGL stack, isn't this likely to be better in the long run despite the short-term pain?

I also wonder what means for WebGL and its future. Right now, WebGL works in browsers on macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS, Android, which is incredible. There is no equivalent.

Sure, Apple has started working on WebGPU, but that’s not yet ready nor is it guaranteed to gain Linux, Windows, Android support.

If I wanted the best possible speed, latest features ect. I would write multiple back ends in things like CUDA.

I choose OpenCL because I can develop code on my Macbook pro, and run that on a computer with a discrete GPU on a different operating system, and have a fair amount of confidence that it would work.

:/

Apple loved HTML5 when they had to kill Flash and get web developers to support mobile, but then as soon as it became a threat to the App Store, Safari's compliance came to a screeching halt and now Safari is in last place, even behind Microsoft's browsers, in HTML5 support.

OpenGL was useful when it was a way to potentially lure people away from Windows, but as soon as Apple had the clout to not care about it and force develops onto its proprietary API, that's what happened.

I almost prefer old-Microsoft's honesty about wanting to kill FOSS, rather than this blatant acknowledgement of FOSS as a tool to be ripped off to improve one's ecosystem dominance and then promptly thrown aside. Makes you wonder what's going to happen if and when Apple no longer needs Clang/LLVM, or, hell, Unix.

If you're Pixelmator or Apple's own Final Cut team, sure, use Metal. For anyone else that wants to make a living, supporting multiple platforms is a given, so you won't pay the slightest attention to this deprecation notice.

[1] https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=214641282559... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17066846

As one of the creators of Direct X at Microsoft commented when Metal was first announced, "Why help Android siphon off their game developers by propping up OpenGL?"

https://web.archive.org/web/20140606055700/http://www.alexst...

Maybe the forced Metal usage (however shitty it is to remove support for an open standard) will increase macOS ports of games.

But in reality, 50% games will still be a wine bottle

Apple always removes stuff which looks untimely or just plain stupid (headphone jacks, optical drives, USB/Firewire ports, optical in & out, rosetta, APIs, etc).

Always the same outrage has happened, but things normalize then. People, companies adapt, hell does not freeze over, company doesn't go bankrupt.

I feel that maintaining OpenGL & OpenCL felt like a burden to Apple. We all know that Apple likes to control everything from hardware to user interface, and GPU drivers are one of the most notoriously complex, overprotected part of the software stack. In the OpenCL world compilers and other stuff (I don't remember the terms clearly, sorry) also gets in, and makes everything much more complex.

Maybe this move will help them to slim the drivers to the basic "hardware-software" interface level and build metal and related technologies to their own term on top of this relatively simple interface.

I have a feeling that metal can be directly translated bidirectionally and relatively cheaply to OpenGL (and maybe Vulkan and OpenCL too), so at the end things don't become extremely complex for everyone.

Apple doesn't feel that backwards compatibility is strictly necessary unless things can be translated and made to work with relatively good performance.

As a Linux and Mac user for 10+ years, these are my observations. They may be wrong, technically incomplete or else. Feel free to discuss, debunk, or downvote.

E.g. for WebGL purposes, all web browsers on Windows emulate OpenGL on top of Microsoft DirectX.

Who’s going to start working on an OpenGL to Metal wrapper?

Way back in 2006, in CS175, we implemented almost all of the core 1.5 pipeline in C++. Software OpenGL implementations may not be the fastest, but they’re more or less trivial (quaternions, trapezoid-based triangle engine, painters algorithm, z-buffering, texture mapping, bump-mapping, lighting and various shading models), and therefore accelerate-able with CPU and GPGPU SIMD ops.

Would it be possible for this driver to add OpenGL/OpenCL and Vulkan support to macOS like it is done on Windows? (Or am I completely misunderstanding how this works)

If you have Apple desktop, a laptop, a phone, connected accounts, apps and associated data, maybe a watch or a TV you are fully within the Apple ecosystem. You cannot leave without it costing you major hassle and stress. This might cause surface inconvenience but it's not going to be enough to push anyone out from that ecosystem. Apple has their users where it wants them, and the users are happy.

The precise wording they use seems to indicate a view of dark themed sets as being less colorful. High contrast themes and visibility aiding limitations in theme color use have their places; so too do themes based around darker, more night time, friendly colors. Thinking of a system as having only one true theme, or of light/dark as being full / visually impaired themes is a dangerously limiting misconception.

Also currently Metal and Accelerate are completely unsuitable replacement to OpenCL for Deep Learning ... Not that deep learning on OpenCL was a thing yet but I was adding support to it in my own framework.

Parallel Ports

Floppy Drives

CD/DVD Drives

Older USB, Firewire ports

Network ports

They were the first to remove all this stuff, and everyone was shocked. Now they are doing this with an API. Both Apple and Microsoft have long ago created much more modern, highly performant graphics technologies over what OpenGL offers, and serious vendors support platform-specific APIs most of the time. If it takes Apple to do this and say to the world "wake up, OpenGL sucks," I view that as progress.

Despite, I don't think your OpenGL app will fail to run on Mac any time soon. I suspect it's years away before they actually remove it entirely.

- https://github.com/ROCm-Developer-Tools/HIP - https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm

"CUDA/HC Portable with HIP", "Microsoft C++AMP", "Apple/Khronos OpenCL": https://github.com/ROCm-Developer-Tools/HIP/blob/roc-1.8.x/d...

Can't believe I'll actually have to switch to windows to develop my OpenGL/WebGL games.

Asking because I am not familiar with these libraries.

(as of high sierra python 2.7, bash 3.2, ....)

New thing: DARK THEME, YES, OMG :(

Is apple holding the future back???? Where is the innovation?

They should take a page from Microsoft and adopt an open, cross-platform technology like DirectX.

The First Moribundity was the period in the 1990s when Apple was coasting on the DTP and Photoshop advantage over Windows they had, reducing the features of their desktops and not innovating. Schindler, a smart but ineffective leader, was replaced by Gil Amelio, a star in his prior field but unable to get Apple headed in the right direction. It took Jobs' return to right the ship that time.

The emphasis on thin but less functional and less serviceable laptops, the dropping of OpenGL, the cruft piling on top of OS X to no new net benefit for users, and their coasting on the desktop market all point to this IMHO.

Their B.S. is getting out of hand. List of gripes:

1. Heavy handed regulation of app store: This needs intervention from regulatory authorities. Apple has successfully inserted itself between the consumer and producer of apps. It plays kingmaker, and very clearly promotes internal apps to the competition (recent ban of the Steam app is a prime example). It's only legal recourse stems from being ~17% of the mobile hardware market, but from a paid-app developer's perspective, not being on the app-store is a definitive death-knell. It's a clear monopoly in the 'paid-app' space, and others are arguing a monopoly classification on other grounds [1][2]

2. Unreasonable restrictions placed on approved apps - like disallowing non-webkit based browser engines. Restricting API access though user security isn't compromised (dlopen, webgl-2, opencl, vulkan, etc). Restrictions designed to choke-hold potential competitors & restrict user choice

3. Forced licensing of hardware parts for accessory makers (look up the Apple MFI program)

4. Purposeful non-conformance towards industry standards (like OpenGl, Vulkan, WebGl, many, many holes in open-wen compliance). This non-conformance is steeped in monopolistic, unfair-trade-practices psychology to maintain absolute, unfair control over any potential competition.

I hope France fucks them for purposefully slowing down older iPhones/iPads. And hope the FTC, EU regulatory authorities pay heed to app-developers (and consumers) getting shafted by a beast of a corporation.

[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-monopoly-ubs-steven-mil...

[2]: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3157551/mobile/apple-must-fa...

Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17231120

Er...

Nowadays Unreal Engine fill the role very well and can sit on top of any platform easily. Popularity wise , together with Unity have completely destroyed both Metal and OpenGL. Vulkan , stands no chance too. Unreal Engine is also open source and very easy to extend because of Blueprints. Unlike OpenGL , is not a C API trying to shoehorn itself into a C++ dominated world.

I have to use OpenGL 3.3 and I am amazed how badly designed it is. A brief look into Vulkan made even less sense.

I don’t agree with everything Apple does but killing Flash and OpenGL is two of my favorites. My only complain is that they have not done it as aggressively as they did with Flash. If they manage to kill JavaScript and HTML/CSS abominations I will become a hardcore Apple fan.